Episode 132 - Being vs. Becoming: Exploring Divine Immutability and Perfect Being Philosophy

Divine perfection has been misunderstood for millennia. Through ancient Greek philosophical lenses, we've defined God's perfection as maximum power, knowledge, and immutability. But what if Jesus had something radically different in mind?

This episode completes our journey exploring divine immutability by examining "perfect being philosophy" - a tradition stretching back to Plato and Aristotle that attempts to conceptualize the absolutely perfect being. At its core lies the distinction between "being" (unchanging, complete) and "becoming" (in flux, developing). Pre-Socratic philosophers Heraclitus and Parmenides established opposing poles: either everything flows in constant change, or stability underlies apparent flux.

When applied to God, this framework raises fascinating questions. The Trinity exists in a state of perfect "being" rather than "becoming" - they aren't striving toward perfection but eternally embody it. Yet philosophical complications arise: Does God have unrealized potential? What about the Son's marriage to the Church described in Revelation? Does potential imply "becoming" rather than perfect "being"?

The truly revolutionary insight comes when we examine Jesus's own definition of perfection. Rather than abstract metaphysical qualities, Jesus points to loving enemies, praying for persecutors, and giving generously to those in need. "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48) reframes divine perfection around self-giving love rather than ontological abstractions.

This perspective transforms how we understand God's unchanging nature. The immutability that matters isn't about static, abstract qualities but about God's unwavering commitment to love even the unlovely. The wisdom of Jesus challenges centuries of philosophical tradition, inviting us to see the wonder and glory of the Father who sends the Son in the power of the Spirit - the Trinity whose perfection is most fundamentally expressed in perfect love.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Transcript

Perfect Being Philosophy Introduction

Speaker 1 0:30

Well, welcome to the next episode of the Christ-Centered Cosmic Civilization, as we hopefully are kind of coming to the end of this long journey into the immutability of God and we are in this third philosophical speculation area of what is called perfect being philosophy. There's a long tradition of this that tries to imagine what a perfect, absolutely perfect being would be like, and then using that imagination or speculation as a platform or lens through which to view even the God of the Bible form, or lens through which to view even the God of the Bible. But this idea of perfect being theology, it kind of goes back to Plato and Aristotle, but, as we'll see in a moment, maybe even the foundations of it go before that. And then it continues through religious philosophers like Plotinus, and we've interacted with him several times in the past 10 weeks. He lived from 204 to 270 AD, and this idea of a perfect being, the absolute one, did have a significant impact on some Christians. And there are this whole series of philosophical speculations and questions around whether it's whether this idea of perfect being.

Speaker 1 2:07

Only to understand this philosophy of perfect being, you kind of have to understand another word, and that's the word becoming. And so, if there are two choices. Does something have being or is it becoming? And then that is how we end up with relating it to immutability and change. So the idea is things. If things are becoming, that means they are in flux and a constant state of change, they're trying to go from becoming to being. Becoming means you're on the way to something and there's constant change, either deterioration and decay or advancement and improvement. But that's becoming, things becoming. And the idea is everything in the physical universe is it either becoming or does it have being? And the idea is if something is not in a state of becoming but in a state of being, something that's in a state of being doesn't change, has absolutely no change, it's, it's arrived at its final form, or it just is, in this absolute, a state of being or a state of becoming. And in that this is Greek philosophy, which goes back even before Plato and Aristotle, this speculation or this way of analysis, to the idea of if something, like if something really exists, it has being, that things things that really exist, things that are real, exist and they have being, but things that don't really exist, the kind of ephemeral that is becoming. So it's almost a contrast. Like is the universe real, in which case it has being, or is it something that is more like an illusion, something that doesn't really exist in the full sense, in that, in that sense, then, it is becoming. So it's an interesting one. It goes back to these two characters, heraclitus and Parmenides, and they are earlier Greek thinkers.

Speaker 1 5:15

And Heraclitus says you can look at the universe superficially and think that there is a kind of stability and that there is being like a fixedness about it, because many things seem to be. As I look at my desk now, the desk itself seems to be fixed and stable, and so I might say it has being in that kind of frame of reference. But what heraclitus would say is nah, actually, if you the more, if you examine it more closely, you'll discover everything is actually in a state of flux and there is no, there is no constant, um, there is nothing constant about it, and that, if it actually, it is decaying and changing and it is becoming older and all kinds of things, like the metal of this lamp that I'm touching now. The metal of the lamp is corroding and if I was to come back and look at that in 20, or somebody who's alive at that point, 20 or 30 years time they might find it rusted and decayed at that in that time. So ah, it turns out that even the things that seem to have being and stability and changelessness are actually in a state of becoming in the universe. So heraclitus says everything is in a in constant flux and change. And so for, uh, everything in the universe, the truth about it, is becoming.

Speaker 1 6:59

But there was a guy called Parmenides and he took the kind of opposite view and he says no, the change is an illusion. So everything seems to be in a state of change, but there is an underlying fixity and solidity and that actually everything fundamentally stays the same and anything that truly exists never changes at all. No flux or variation. And so there's an under. So the universe does exist, it is real, and that there's an underlying fixity and being and changelessness to it. There's an order that underlies the superficial flux. So these two wouldn't have you know. Obviously they're like absolute opposites. For Heraclitus the stability is the illusion, change is the reality. Paromenides is the opposite. He says change is the illusion, that's superficial, but underneath that there's an order and a fixity and a stability and a reality. So those are these two streams or poles in this Greek philosophical tradition.

Being versus Becoming Explained

Speaker 1 8:13

Is everything becoming? Is it changing into something else, in which case it doesn't have being, or is there a fundamental being that never changes, because it already is all it can be and it is fixed? And so the comparison between becoming and being. So, with that frame of reference, if people say, well, you're either be, there's, either being, in which case there is change, but that that that's not real existence, that is a state of becoming, that isn't, that is not to have true existence.

Speaker 1 9:07

So if then, people, using that philosophical, that human philosophical framework of a contrast, two poles, becoming and being, two options, and then you say now then the Father, son and Spirit, are they in a state of becoming or are they in a state of being, well then you would say, oh well, the Father, son and spirit, uh, are not in a state of becoming the perfect being, as if, or because they're not, they're not be, uh, in a state of becoming the living god, as if they have yet to achieve deity, like deity is what they're aiming for. They're trying to become god. No, that's to it. That sounds blasphemous. Rather, we always speak of the living god as the great I am, who already is and was and always will be the lord god just is the perfect being, the, the eternal God, the Father, son and Spirit are perfect in all their ways and works and they are not striving to become perfect. They're not trying to become perfect. They're not trying to become God, trying to attain some state of being. Everything they do is perfect. They just are perfect in what they are, how they act, think, feel, will. Nothing can happen to change that.

Speaker 1 10:36

And we've thought about that idea of potential and this is a well, let's introduce this, this philosophical problem of potential, because we might say they are perfect and they have this, so that, from a philosophical this in that Greek tradition, if they have this, so that from a philosophical this in that greek tradition, if they have being, they have, they have this, they are, they have being, so they are perfect. Any being is perfect in that sort of sense. To have being is to be perfect and therefore there can't be any change. Because if there is any change, that would be a state of becoming. So no, okay, the father, son, spirit, state of of being, and no becoming of any kind. That that's the, the contrast. But what? What would that mean in terms of the actions of the Father through the Son, by the Spirit, if they act, is that, are they becoming? Well, they're not becoming.

Speaker 1 11:48

But the word potential is difficult here. Are there possibilities within the Trinity that have yet to be realized? So, for example, if we say that God the Son has the potential to be married to church and after the marriage feast of the Lamb there will be a kind of consummation church and after the marriage feast of the lamb there will be a kind of consummation, a permanent joining of life and love between god the son and his bride, the church. So that's a relationship and only might say before the creation of the universe there was a potential for the son to have to become flesh and to have a relationship with the world and so on, this potential for relations and relationships and experiences and things like that. But if there is that potential within we're just thinking about God the Son at the moment, but we could have similar thought experiments about the Father and the Spirit. But it's easy to do this a bit with the Son, where there is just so obviously things that the Son does and relationships that the Son has If there is that potential within the Son to have this particular kind of relationship with the creation and with his people, with church, that escalates to this moment of consummation, and the book of revelation builds to this, where there is something that is called a marriage feast and a particular kind of intensity of union between the son and church.

Speaker 1 13:32

Um, what does that mean? Is that a state of becoming? Is there any becoming at all? For the Father, son and Spirit, is there any sense of becoming? We might say, well, no, because all the fullness of deity that's being, that's fixed. They are God in all the fullness of God, from everlasting to everlasting. Yeah, yeah, that's something we've made very clear throughout all these studies. But is there any sense of becoming at all? Like, no, not, it's difficult, because that philosophical framework just gives you these two options Something either is or it's becoming.

Speaker 1 14:51

But if and this is this point again if the father is going to dwell on earth with his people forever and ever and, as 2 Peter 3 says, that the heavens and the earth are going to be renewed to become the home of righteousness and the Son will be married to church and have that particular kind of existence, whatever that looks like and however that's going to work for everlasting ages in a renewed physical universe, all of that. If that, whatever, however that future relates, the father son spirit will relate or or dwell in some way. That is not the same as the way they're dwelling with us right now, does that? Is there any sense in which they've moved through? Like we want to say it's all perfect. The father, son and spirit are perfect now when they dwell in the way they dwell and relate to us, and then it will be. It's still absolutely perfect in the way they dwell with us and relate to us. It's all perfection. But is it exactly the same? Is it exactly it's? They are exactly the same. Father, son and Holy Spirit, the eternal Trinity, the Father begetting the Son, breathing out the Spirit.

Speaker 1 16:12

So there's that structural permanence to the Trinity, obviously, but in their relations with us, is there anything that's that's not? You know, is is. I don't know how do we express all that. You know, everything in creation has potential to be something other than it is, perhaps to improve or to decay, to get better or worse, to turn into something else. So we might say a tree has the potential to become a chair. The tree could also has the potential to be a table or even a bonfire. So a tree or endless other things. A tree has the potential to be like endless number of things, okay, but we would not want to say that the living God has the potential to become other things in that same way. That kind of potential does not exist within the living God. It's not like the Trinity will become something else.

Ancient Greek Philosophical Roots

Speaker 1 17:16

The Trinity and that's the point with that second kind of immutability that is confessed in the creeds that we believe in one God, who is the Father and is the Son, who is eternally begotten of the Father and who is the Spirit, who the Father breathes out that the Trinity will always be the Trinity and will never become anything other than the eternal Trinity. The immutability of God then in in the ecumenical creeds that God the Son is the eternal Son of the Father. He'll never become anything other than that he is the perfect Son of the Father, will never cease to be that. He is perfectly what he is in all his ways perfect, good and righteous, never deteriorating into anything less than being the eternal son of the father in the unity of the spirit. So philosophers might like to say that God has fulfilled all God's potential and is already and eternally everything that God could possibly be the full, perfect expression of being Okay.

Speaker 1 18:30

So in a common sense way, we might say that the Trinity doesn't have potential. There is no potential within God, but rather has actuality. So the Trinity does not have the potential to be the living God who is perfect in everything, but really is actually the living God who is perfect in everything. Furthermore, we might say that all of us creatures have lots of potential. We have potential to become much more or much less than we currently are, and there's lots of ways we fall short of perfection. So yet the fact that the Trinity has already actualized potential means that there is a perfection, a completeness for us to dream of, for us to look up to, to be the very basis for all our unrealized potential. So there, the idea is that in the Father, son and Spirit is the perfection of beauty and truth and goodness, and so for the universe that has all this potential, and us also individually and so on, we can see and be drawn towards the perfection of goodness, truth and beauty that is, and eternally is, expressed in all the ways and works of the Father, son and Spirit.

Speaker 1 20:18

Now, one line of philosophical thought going right back to Aristotle is that if everything in the universe is becoming and changing, then there has to be something that is unchanging being that provides the foundation for everything else. And we might think, oh, that's a kind of interesting thought but let's not worry about it. But actually this idea has had a very strong influence over a long tradition of religious philosophy, even Christian religious philosophy. Many have tried to build whole systems of theology and philosophy on religion the idea of God being that kind of unchanging, ultimate, being the unchanging, unmoving foundation for all change and movement in the universe. This idea of God being an unmoved mover, an unchanged changer. Unmoved mover, an unchanged changer, a being who has no potential but only pure actuality, the fully realized fulfillment of all being, and then that being the kind of solid basis from which all movement and change in the universe comes. It is based on a kind of Aristotelian physics of movement and we might want to complain about that or investigate that or reject that, but we can't do that now. This is deeply embedded within Western philosophy, so we kind of have to live with it.

God's Perfect Being and Potential

Speaker 1 22:09

But what does it mean to have fully realized all potential? Well, in one sense that might be a reasonable thing to say about the Trinity. We might say the Father is not potentially compassionate or potentially righteous or potentially wise, but he really is actually all of those things all of the time. The father, son and spirit are not on a cosmic self-improvement program, and so the Trinity does not become better or more divine as events unfold, and they do not realize potential or actualize potential. They just are, uh, they are the living god, and with with perfect righteousness, compassion, wisdom, so on.

Speaker 1 23:00

The idea, then, is that the perfect being must remain in an utterly unvarying state of perfect being, or else variation raises the problem of is the variation better or worse? If the variation is better, then the perfect being was not perfect before. If the variation is worse, then the perfect being has become slightly less than perfect. And then we might say, oh, it's good to have potential, it's good to have potential, and by that we mean it's good to have what is sometimes, in football, called a high ceiling. There's a lot of room, a lot of potential for improvement. But so we might say, oh, it's good to have potential, but to have fully realized all your potential is the best. So the ultimate being cannot have any potential, but must have realized all its potential to the maximum. So can we see how.

Speaker 1 24:09

It is one thing to confess that the Trinity is perfect in sort of simple way that the Bible does, but this can become more complicated if we introduce this idea of potential and actuality. Now, can we step around this pothole? And and not because it does, um well, can we simply acknowledge that the eternal father, son and spirit are not potentially the living god, but they actually are the living god and they are not trying to improve themselves and cat, there is nothing to improve upon they. They're not, they're never going to be an upgraded kind of being or upgraded kind of God. They are already, together, perfect in all their ways and works and in what they are and what they do. So whatever the Father does through the Son in the power of the Spirit is perfect in every way. None of their actions causes the power of the Spirit is perfect in every way. None of their actions causes any member of the Trinity to become any less divine than they are. No deterioration or decay, and no improvement either. There's no sense in which they are becoming a better form of God or something like that.

Unmoved Mover and Actualized Potential

Speaker 1 25:23

Fair enough, in fact, the Bible kind of deals with this in a way in Colossians 2, verse 9. Even when God, the Son, became flesh to live among us, he did not in any way dilute or lessen his divinity, but rather Colossians 2, verse 9, says that in Christ all the fullness of deity lives in bodily form. So even when the father sent the son, in the power of the spirit, to do something so extraordinary for the son to become flesh and remain human forever and ever even such an event or a, if we want to use the word change there did not change his divinity or take away his full divine life. Now, all that seems clear. We're a little bit nervous of the simple contrast between being and becoming because we're wondering does that get us into sort of traps of where God can't do anything without ending up being described as becoming? But if we're happy, we don't feel there's any insurmountable problems there. We still, I think, want to flag up some problems around the philosophical speculations about perfect being.

Speaker 1 26:56

It's worth recognizing that the Bible does deal with the idea of perfection, but perfection has a very different meaning in the Bible and in fact a very, very different meaning in the wisdom of God. Perfection, what is that? So perfection in that Greek philosophical tradition is this very abstract idea of, for example, having a maximal amount of power or a maximal amount of knowledge or a maximal amount of wisdom or influence or sovereignty or resources and things like that. That is what is meant by perfect being in that perfect being theology or philosophy, but it isn't what is meant in the Bible. So think of what Jesus says in his mighty sermon, matthew 5, 44 to 48. I tell you, love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your father in heaven. The father causes his son to rise on the evil and the good. He sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Even tax collectors do that. If you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Don't even pagans do that. And then here it comes, matthew 5, verse 48,. Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect.

Speaker 1 28:39

And so when we get into what is called perfect being theology, I always have that slight nervousness that are we dealing? Are we using a kind of view of perfection that isn't important within the bible? I mean, it's, yeah, obviously, the idea that god is so powerful that he can do whatever he pleases and nothing can be hidden from his sight. Sure, all that. But it's as if Jesus is saying listen, what the kind of perfection that matters most to the Father, son and Spirit is a perfection of loving your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you. Do good to people who are causing, who are doing bad to you. In Jesus's mind, that is a. That's the kind of perfection that we should focus on. That's what perfection really looks like.

Speaker 1 29:43

And the reason I want to really flag that up and get agitated almost about it is when I read perfect being philosophy, they take it for granted that the, the heart of the perfect being is power, knowledge, uh, existence, things like that, like absolute abstractions. That's what a perfect being is like. But jesus never says anything like that in his mind he's like no, that's not the perfect being, a perfect being, it's not. It'd be like saying, if you said, if we say, what colour is the perfect being? And we might say well, in my tradition, green is the best colour. So obviously the perfect being has the maximum amount of green. Or we might say, the best shape is a sphere, or we might say a cube, and therefore the perfect being has the maximum amount of cubeness, because that's the most. And we might go well, that's just weird. It doesn't matter what colour or what shape something is. That's irrelevant to it being a perfect to perfect being, and we might even laugh at it.

Jesus's Definition of Perfection

Speaker 1 31:09

I kind of suspect Jesus would do that when if he listened into perfect being philosophy and perfect being philosophy is all like this perfect being is maximum amount of power, maximum amount of knowledge, maximum amount of wisdom, maximum resources, maximum amount of life force or whatever it is, and he's like that's irrelevant. What's that got to do with perfection? The amount of power you've got, that's perfection. It doesn't matter how much power you've got. It doesn't matter how much knowledge you've got. It doesn't matter how many resources you can lay your hand on. It doesn't matter even how long your life is.

Speaker 1 31:50

Perfection is about love. Love particularly for enemies, love for people that are not giving you any love. That is what perfect being looks like. I know I can imagine someone listening said no, that you don't understand. That's a totally different kind of perfection. What? What would trump? What we need to be concerned about is a philosophical perfection. But I kind of do think j Jesus is the greatest philosopher there's ever been and that he's just cutting through and saying this is what perfection is really about, and an agenda that's worried about ontological abstractions. All we need to know about the power of the Father, son and Spirit is like the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit. The son and spirit is like the. The father through the son, in the power of the spirit, does whatever he pleases and no one can question him. That's that's good. He has this kingdom. That is an everlasting dominion. That can never be. That's fine, but that isn't. But perfection is found. His perfection is found in that. This is, according to Jesus, in this kind of love, even for those who don't love him. That's what Jesus thinks perfection looks like.

Speaker 1 33:07

Or in Matthew 19, verses 20 to 21,. Jesus meets a young man and the young man says what do I still lack? So in what way am I imperfect? Basically, this young man says to Jesus how am I imperfect? What do I need to change to become perfect? Jesus answered if you want to be perfect, go sell your possessions, give to the poor, you will have treasure in heaven. Then come follow me. I love that Also Jesus's view of perfection.

Speaker 1 33:46

He doesn't say to the man like in the, in the, in that philosophical tradition of perfect being and so on. They would say what you need to do to become perfect is spend a lot of time meditating on perfect things, perfect abstractions. That's what the perfect human being should do. This is what Plato and Aristotle, their tradition, is. The perfect person is a person who meditates a lot on perfect things. Is a person who meditates a lot on perfect things, jesus would say that's got nothing whatsoever to do with perfection, and what you're meditating on isn't even perfection. Like perfection is selling what you've got and sharing it with those in need. That's perfection. Can you see those two views of perfection Love, generosity. That's what perfection looks like. Now, what would it be like to have a perfect being?

Speaker 1 34:48

Philosophy that started with that sort of a view of perfection and said well, a perfect being is a being who loves those who are unlovely or gives generously to those in need. That's the starting point for a view of perfection, real perfection. So there we are. It's as far as we can go in our analysis of the immutability of God. We're saying, look, god is in this third part of the philosophy points.

Speaker 1 35:29

We're saying, yeah, look, god doesn't have the potential to become God, but is fully divine. All the fullness of deity lives completely, uh, in jesus, through from the father, through the son, by the power of spirit. All of that, like the trinity, is actually god in all the fullness? There's no, because there's no attempt. There's no. It's totally wrong to say god is trying to become god or anything like that. God just is that fixed, eternal trinity, perfect in all the ways, works, will, all of that. But we want to end with this idea that the perfection of God shouldn't really be defined in that strange and abstract way, because the Bible warns us that human wisdom is nothing compared to divine wisdom. And let's begin with that wisdom of Jesus and think of perfection in some very, very, very different way, a way that drives us to see the wonder and glory of Jesus, sent from the Father, in the power of the Spirit.